pup wrote:His mechanics seemed to work just fine a couple years ago. He got dinged up and someone decided to tweek them. Now the Tribe wanted to overhaul them.

Bad idea.

Are we sure that Ubaldo didn't change them himself when he got hurt during Spring Training 2011? That's what Westbrook did when he hurt his oblique in 2007. He altered his delivery to come back faster and then the added strain on his elbow led to 2008's Tommy John.

I don't have a link for that, but back in summer 2008, Poove and I had a guy named Kyle Boddy from Driveline Mechanics, a baseball training website, on our Sunday night podcast, and he told us that was more than likely the reason.

Not out of the realm of possibility that Ubaldo altered his mechanics after he had the hip problem and then developed a lot of bad habits.

Boddy used to do side-by-side comparisons of pro pitchers and post them on his website. Maybe I'll track him down and see if he has the time to look at Ubaldo in 2010 and then Ubaldo now. His analysis was always very detailed.

Thought I remembered talk of the Indians "straightening" his delivery out and cutting down on movements.

pup wrote:Any chance he shows a transition from one to another, or is it a light switch?

I imagine he'll have side-by-side .gif files in the article and explain, in a physiological sense, why it has caused his velo to drop. His background's in physiological sciences or something like that, so the whole purpose of his Driveline Baseball is to teach proper throwing mechanics to pitchers so that they throw with the least amount of stress.

If his Hardball Times articles are like the ones he used to have on his blog, he might even have Ubaldo broken down frame by frame.

A God Damn dead man would understand that if a minor league bus in any city took a real sharp right turn, a Zack McCalister would likely fall out. - Lead Pipe